MUSEUM NEWS NOTES 93 
installation demonstrates graphically and on a satisfactory scale the 
relative positions of the members of the solar system as far as Mars on 
the day of observation, gives the morning and evening stars on that day 
and the reasons for their being such and illustrates other facts in astron- 
omy that often are obscure to most people. 
Dr. Ropert H. Lowi returned to the Museum September 4, from 
an extended ethnological trip to the Northwest. He left New York 
on May 5 to visit the Chipewyan Indians, residing on Lake Athabaska 
in the northernmost part of the province of Alberta, Canada. Dr. 
Lowie secured notes on the industrial life and mythological conceptions 
of these Indians and took many photographs illustrating their physical 
types. On the way back to New York, he spent four weeks in Montana, 
where he continued his studies of the ethnology of the Assiniboine. 
TuHereE has recently been installed in the American Indian Hall 
(No. 102 of the First Floor) a valuable loan exhibit of paintings and 
sketches of Chippewa Indians which were made from life by the noted 
portrait painter, the late Eastman Johnson, while on an expedition 
through the Middle West in 1856 and 1857. 
THE results of the expedition to James Bay and vicinity by Mr. 
Alanson Skinner, of the Department of Anthropology, are most important 
in that he obtained not only interesting ethnological material from the 
Cree Indians, but also much new and valuable information regarding 
their religious and social customs. The Cree are essentially hunters, 
and the complete set of specimens brought back by this expedition will 
add much to the ethnological interest of the collections already installed 
in our halls. An attempt to study the Naskapi, a little-known tribe 
formerly frequenting the east coast of Hudson Bay, was fruitless, since 
the Indians now remain in the country bordering the Atlantic. Mr. 
Skinner and his party traveled more than a thousand miles in an 18-foot 
canoe, had many thrilling experiences and narrowly escaped starvation 
while returning through the forests of northern Canada. A full account 
of the expedition and its results is reserved for a future number of the 
JOURNAL. 
A RECENT letter from Mr. V. Stefansson, who, with Mr. R. M. 
Anderson, left New York City in April on an expedition to the mouth 
